Colarusso was back on the Planning Board agenda last night, for the first time since November 2021, when the Planning Board made a positive declaration in the SEQR (State Environmental Quality Review) process. Colarusso responded by bringing a lawsuit against the Planning Board, and that lawsuit has prevented the Planning Board from continuing its review for the past twenty months. In the intervening time, the makeup of the Planning Board has changed significantly. Only two people who were on the Planning Board in November 2021 are still on the Planning Board: Theresa Joyner, who now chairs the board, and John Cody.
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| Photo: Bill Huston |
Privatera's presentation provided no new information. He stressed that A. Colarusso & Son was a "local, family owned business," asserted that the Columbia County Planning Board considers the road to be "an environmental justice project," claimed that the road was the fulfillment of a goal of the 2002 Comprehensive Plan, alleged it was the vision of the City to have a mixed use waterfront and the City wanted the dock, and touted the plan as protecting and restoring the wetlands of South Bay. Privatera's entire presentation can be heard here, beginning at 29:50.
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| John Privatera (left), Colarusso attorney, and Paul Colarusso (right), president of A. Colarusso & Son |
Sam Pratt noted that the Planning Board had a "monumental task" before it, for two main reasons. The first reason cited was the turnover on the board--only two of the current members were on the board in 2021--and "massive record of public input and professional studies to be reviewed." Pratt wanted to know how the Planning Board intended to get up to speed. The second reason was the applicant's attorney, who, Pratt said, "is quite willing to mislead you and sue you." As an example, Pratt pointed out that the 2002 Comprehensive Plan, which Privatera cited as evidence that what Colarusso was proposing was in line with what the City had envisioned for itself, said nothing about truck traffic going to the waterfront because at the time the comprehensive plan was done there were no trucks going back and forth from the quarry to the waterfront.
Responding to Pratt's question about the board getting up to speed, Joyner assured him, "We plan to be diligent. . . . It's gonna take time. . . . We are going to read [everything] and not move until we understand every bit of it."
The entire segment of the Planning Board meeting devoted to Colarusso merits viewing. The video of the meeting can be found here. The Colarusso part of the meeting begins at 29:50 and ends at 1:27:17.
The Planning Board has scheduled a site visit to the proposed road for Saturday, August 19, at 9:00 a.m. The public hearing on the project will take place at the next Planning Board meeting, which is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, September 12.
I wonder how much $$ Colarusso's lawsuits have cost Hudson taxpayers?
ReplyDeleteThe most amazing thing about this 7-year review process is that the Planning Board still hasn't gotten to the point of reviewing any of the downside impacts of the Colarusso proposition. It's been nothing but lawsuits, delay, and avoidance.
ReplyDeleteAgree with Peter here. At no point have the environmental and economic impacts on Hudson been explored--certainly not by Greenport, which the record shows pretended there weren't any impacts, and not by Hudson, with Colarusso fighting the city’s right of review every step of the way. Why is that?
ReplyDeleteAt Our Hudson Waterfront we’ve been asking the same questions for the past six years—reasonable questions that never get answered, it seems by design.
• How will Colarusso’s proposal impact public enjoyment of the riverfront park?
• How will increased truck traffic impact thriving businesses along the route?
• How will increased traffic and gravel loading affect the ecology of the protected South Bay?
• And how will it discourage development that is more aligned with the City’s LWRP—development far more likely to create new jobs and enhance our quality of life?
• How will increased noise and pollution affect nearby residents?
• And how will we deal with new safety issues the plan will create, with busy truck crossings at two major highways and one of the state’s busiest rail corridors?
Any sane city would insist on its right to thoroughly review these questions before making a decision that is so momentous to its future health and prosperity. That the company and its in-town backers are so resistant to that review speaks volumes.
What thriving businesses are along the current haul road? An old beat-up factory, L&B building? The Riverfront Park seems to be enjoyed by many people, who aren't the ones complaining. With the train tracks running through that area, the noise pollution from them far exceeds any truck traffic noise.
DeleteIf Colarusso is this troublesome and disruptive in the review process, imagine how they would behave if they ever got permits.
ReplyDeleteIs it corruption, nepotism, fear? I don't think it matters either way the problem is local officials seem unwilling to do their job representing the interests of the public. Whether it is Colarusso's gravel operation or Galvan's unneeded apartment projects city officials seem intent on permitting these companies to engage in activity that degrades the quality of life for city residents.
ReplyDeleteThe solution to the road is obvious, prohibit heavy truck traffic off the state truck route and deny the road expansion. There is no reason two way traffic can not be used now on the existing gravel road, everyone has cell phones, all they have to do is arrange the trips.
The way this has been allowed to drag out for decades is pathetic. Just like the rotting Furgary shacks and bridge it reeks of ineptitude.
1.
ReplyDeleteAll true Peter - the expensive lawsuits, the delays, and the avoidance - and all part of a long strategy to wear the city down at every possible step.
As we've seen for years, residents who surrendered early were always pitted against those who can explain the con. We even defended Local Law against some of the city's own lawyers, and we prevailed (although secret Agenda-writers seem a bridge too far).
Colarusso has deliberately fostered the conditions it always planned to exploit. With the help of confederates in city, county, and state governments, the suffering visited on residents in the lower city was always voluntary and strategic.
Everyone knows that Colarusso spent millions buying the property in 2014, so who really believes the investors failed to discover the same property's amended Zoning Code from 2011?
Yet, when Colarusso submitted its first applications in 2016, it reported to the Hudson Planning Board that the proposed new road was "a permitted use under the zoning regulations" (4/27/16 EAF). Colarusso even misled the US Army Corps of Engineers by stating on its federal application for the proposal that no additional local permits were required (4/27/16).
Colarusso's Environmental Justice argument is the principal lie. Faced with the insurmountable fact that the property was purchased AFTER the Environmental Justice crisis was addressed to exhaustion in the city's LWRP (waterfront program), the company's adopted tactic was to pretend that a situation they purchased with eyes wide open 1) amounted to an unfair privation, and 2) required a new plan to alleviate the tactical suffering they'd continue to impose on the city.
But the minimal starting point in the LWRP's gravel transport alternative was always to establish the two-way use of the causeway's existing one-lane road.
As explained to the Common Council by the principal attorney for NYS DOS, William Sharp, the City would thus limit the number of trucks using the waterfront at any one time while avoiding the legal hazard of directly regulating a private enterprise.
2.
ReplyDeleteEven though it's had no attention of late, the LWRP remains the most comprehensive plan to address Environmental Justice (EJ) in Hudson. Unless, that is, the city's adopted laws and policies are to be discarded by newcomers whose understandably limited knowledge has them yearning for a fresh start. But in this age of starting everything anew at the first sign of trouble, people should not being misled by those who'd flatter their easiest prejudices. Whatever your quibbles, you'll find that the waterfront program has already accounted for them.
As distasteful as it was at the time, the same zoning amendments now so resented by Colarusso constituted a grand compromise between several warring waterfront factions.
With very few alternatives to choose from in 2011, today there are even fewer options with possible eminent domain even less likely and the old L&B now a thriving hub of commerce.
In retrospect, the creation of the Core Riverfront Zoning District enabled a suitable alternative to the city's Environmental Justice pressures, albeit it at the expense of other priorities which an approved "haul road" will only further degrade.
Moreover, today the LWRP's same alternative is near to completion, though curiously you don't hear much about it.
Instead, we hear that hardworking residents and officials who achieved a difficult and since-codified compromise central to a monumental plan are ... wait for it ... unwilling to compromise!
Though I've always liked Mr. Hughes personally, unfortunately he never applied himself to any perspective other than his own. Because he only ever angled for the single goal he was told best served his community, he failed to appreciate the grand compromise itself, or to see that his own goals in the LWRP were only attained by greater compromises on the part of every other identified priority.
If I were cynical about Mr. Hughes, which I'm not, one might see his inability to grasp the LWRP's compromises as a purposeful tactic to achieve the narrowest of EJ solutions at the total expense of any and all other interests. After all, that is the usual reward for such intransigence.
There is still time, though, to learn why the 2011 LWRP plan is the best overall solution to a problem Colarusso knew it was buying in 2014. Indeed, the LWRP is required reading to grasp how Colarusso has held the city hostage to get the only outcome it wants (and certainly since the company completed the necessary road sections east of Rte. 9G which are central to the alternative plan in the LWRP).
3.
ReplyDeleteHowever well-intended Mr. Hughes is, those who can't see beyond their immediate advantage are ever a threat to participatory democracy. As maddening as the LWRP process was, it was in large measure achieved through public participation, an accomplishment Colarusso and others now insist we ignore.
Ever positioned to exploit the unnecessary suffering of the city's least advantaged, Linda Mussman is Colarusso's most tireless advocate. For some reason she puts the company's welfare first, while encouraging the ignorance and narrow self-interest of her cultivated supporters. I can say this with confidence because I personally explained the 2011 compromise vis-a-vis the Environmental Justice issues she claims to care so much about.
Soon after I'd confirmed, dialectically, that Ms. Mussman understood the importance of the LWRP for Environmental Justice, I was astounded when she retreated to the practice of manipulating the city's lesser lights by employing arguments I know I successfully demonstrated were total distortions! Like Colarusso, she prefers the LWRP never existed.
Ironically, if Supervisor Mussman had helped by supporting the LWRP, there's a good chance we'd have accomplished our shared aims for Environmental Justice years ago. Instead, she opted to sow and then exploit confusion in the very districts she pretends to defend.
Considering this degree of bad faith in an influential public official, we can only hope that the current Planning Board members recognize the importance of institutional memory and continuity in government, and that they respect our cumulative public efforts to shape policies which likely precede these member's arrival in Hudson.
Really, though, everyone should reacquaint themselves with the development of the Core Riverfront Zoning District, and how the LWRP's specific road alternative which the District was shaped to accommodate is now all-but-completed! How on earth does that not top the list of considerations?!
The reason the company won't complete the LWRP alternative is simple. Even before it purchased the property Colarusso never wanted a single-lane private road to be used in both directions. Look how easy it was to cry, speciously, that it cannot be done!, while holding city neighborhoods hostage to damaging truck traffic all the while. I mean when they weren't actually suing the city.
Hudson must not reward Colarusso's carefully laid scam, how impressive their patience in achieving it.
Thank you Tim. And thank you Sam, Peter, David, and Donna.
DeleteOn their return to the quarry from the waterfront dock, Colarusso's empty trucks travel eastward on Columbia St. between Front & Third. That stretch of road is not the official truck route-- the company was granted special permission to use it by the Common Council some years ago, for reasons that are unclear to me. If Linda Mussman is such a devoted advocate for the minority citizens impacted by this noxious traffic, she ought to be in front of the Council, advocating that the special permission be retracted immediately.
ReplyDeleteas is permitted by nys traffic law and hudson city code a simple directive by police commissioner thomas quigley (02/18/76) permitted trucks onto city streets never intended to handle the loads (especially front st). shane bower could simply rescind directive #3.
DeleteHi Dave. I figure that closing the impromptu truck route from the waterfront will have Colarusso complaining that government is "taking" its business. That is, unless there's another option. And there is.
DeleteBut can anyone explain how the company is operating at all without a permit? Didn't its "grandfathered" right to operate end in January 2019 with the Melkonian judgement?
Melkonian's ruling seems clear enough to me:
"Indeed, the extensive record herein reflects that the [Hudson] Planning Board made it abundantly clear to petitioners [Colarusso] that inasmuch as petitioners' nonconforming use had ceased, they would be required to obtain a conditional use permit for their continued commercial dock operations" [Decision and Order, p. 3].
So is this a case of Hudson doing Colarusso yet another favor? After all, it was Colarusso's own unlawful actions which triggered the permit requirement. Moreover, when Colarusso sued Hudson twice, it lost both times when claiming that the city had misinterpreted its own laws.
So where's the initiative in city government to leverage this advantage? Where's the leadership, and not only from the mayor but from the Common Council who, in 2011, officially adopted the only road alternatives the city found acceptable (NB, a two-lane road was never countenanced).
Now is the time to press a negotiation, before the Planning Board reaches a determination. Now's the time for someone in City Hall to reverse the inexplicable power differential that allows a de facto hostage situation between Colarusso and those who suffer Environmental Justice abuses at their hands. To be sure, city, county and state officials perpetuate this suffering whenever government parrots the lie that Colarusso has no other option.
The road alternatives in the 2011 waterfront program took years to study and plan. The fact that the most obvious alternative is today nearly completed is the most glaring oversight in the entire story. Following its 2017 updates, NYS DOT informed me that the DOT-required curb cuts at both state routes (9 & 9-G) can be installed in a single afternoon. For the alternative already blessed by the city in 2011, that would only require updating Prendergast's 2009 site plan.
Every gratuitous benefit Colarusso has enjoyed over the years should be included in a negotiated overall solution to all of the above conundrums. Today, the private causeway east of Rte. 9-G is a two-lane road, something which was never envisioned in the LWRP. Colarusso got that as a freebie when Hudson's CEO deemed the widening as "maintenance." But some sections were widened nearer the waterfront when no one but residents looked on. To achieve the best possible outcome for the city short of eminent domain, all of the above should be revisited in a proper negotiation.
Sadly, the more promising strategy for Colarusso and its minions in city, county, and state governments is continued pressure in Environmental Justice areas until they get their way. That includes Supervisor Mussman who knows exactly what she's doing. But for the company's feet to be held to the fire, someone with leadership abilities in city government - anyone! - must first acknowledge the towering lie that Colarusso has no other options. In fact, it's right in front of our noses.
The language you quote from J. Melkonian's decision isn't a holding in the case, it's dicta. I haven't read that decision since it came down but it may in fact contain such a holding (unless the judge kicked the can) -- but the language you quote isn't a holding. It's discussion.
DeleteWhile Hudson and Hudsonites clearly have both a vital and important interest in how trucking happens in our burg and at our waterfront, we have to be cognizant of the fact that NYS policy is that really heavy stuff -- such as the aggregate produced by ACS -- be transported by water as much as practicable. So the local and state policies are clearly in conflict. Given that NYS grants nearly no actual home rule to its municipalities, the only real way to solve this problem is to get all the parties to the table. And the obvious person to moderate and make such a meeting happen is either our assemblywoman or state senator. Both of whom are conspicuous by their absence from this process. Same goes for the larger truck route issue and coordinating the appropriate towns and Hudson reps to move a solution forward. But that would require actual leadership, management and a desire to do the job -- something all the relevant parties seem to lack in both contexts.
ReplyDeleteSeems to me banning the traffic on city streets and requiring the gravel road be used two ways is the best solution. It wouldn't have an adverse impact on the gravel operation, pretty sure they could move the same amount of gravel they do now.
ReplyDeleteEven better would be to also add a railroad crossing closer to the exit from the gravel road rather than using the existing crossing. Then the trucks could enter the property to unload without interfering with cars and pedestrians.
There is zero upside for Hudson in having that gravel dump and associated truck traffic on our waterfront. But there is a ton of downside, so it's amazing that we are even having this discussion. The root problem continues to be abysmally low community self-esteem.
ReplyDeleteReaders may don their own thinking caps when reviewing the entire court discussion around Colarusso's alleged right to the uninterrupted use of its operations. The context, posted in the following comment, was Colarusso's first lawsuit against the Hudson Planning Board.
ReplyDeleteDoes the following look like a mere academic discussion to you, or is it an actual judgement?
In a dialogue involving all three participants - Petitioner, Defendant, Judge - Colarusso pointedly rejected the Planning Board's argument against continued use only to be explicitly contradicted by Judge Melkonian. Seems like a judgement to me.
First up (1) is Ken Dow for the Hudson Planning Board on 11/27/17. Next (2), representing Colarusso, John Privitera replied to Dow's argument on 12/6/17. Finally (3), Judge Melkonian specifically rejected a defense for Colarusso's continued use on 1/23/19, agreeing with Dow. (4) is a bonus quotation from Judge Zwack.
None of your examples are in fact holdings — some aren’t even from the court. Just because a court say something doesn’t make it a holding. And if it’s not a holding the it’s dicta. I can understand how, for example, those without a legal education or skills might confuse the two sometimes but they are different and only holdings carry weight. Confusing the two — on purpose or otherwise — is precisely how the NRA convinces people that there can be no limits on the 2A. But it’s weak tea and not legal analysis. It’s propaganda.
DeleteAsking questions is not akin to "propaganda."
DeleteIf you wish to be consistent and to help, then apply yourself to Ken Dow's winning Memorandum of Law in which he opined that “a serious question exists as to whether the dock operation has been operating lawfully since 2011 or 2014, in compliance with the limitations of sections 325-29 and 325-17.1 referenced above, and, if it has not conformed to those laws, whether it has any right at all to continue to operate” (Dow, 2017, p. 24).
Now having spoken to more than one attorney, these "dicta" you dismiss as incidental musings in Judge Melkonian's questioning of Colarusso's right to continue operations were arguably intended as a roadmap for the City.
DeleteLooking at the recent Court of Appeals decision, 100% of Melkonian's judgements were preserved intact even though most of Colarusso's same complaints were reargued (incredibly) before the more sympathetic Judge Zwack.
Going forward, who'd believe that the Appeals Division will gainsay Melkonian's firm opinion if the City wishes to act on it?
At any rate, I don't understand people's efforts to reinforce the city's timidity against openly hostile actors, although a lawyer will understandably have loyalties that are impossible to predict.
1. Ken Dow in his “Memorandum of Law” on 11/27/17:
ReplyDelete“[The] work was the triggering event that terminated Petitioners’ right to operate as a non-conforming use …” [Dow, p. 3].
“[T]he Code section provides for the continuation of the commercial dock operations “*as such uses existed* on the effective date [in 2011] …. and therefore [the bulkhead work] is the triggering event that terminates the right of Petitioners to continue to operate the commercial dock as a nonconforming use ...” [Dow, p. 10; emphasis (at asterisks) in original].
“Petitioners were required to submit the commercial dock operations in their entirety to Planning Board for review and to obtain a conditional use permit for the use of the parcel as a commercial dock operation” [Dow, p. 11; emphasis in original].
“[A] crucial qualifier is included in the [City] law, which expressly provides that an 'existing commercial dock operation may continue to operate *as a nonconforming use until'* any of certain specified events occur. This structure allows the dock owner & operator (Petitioners since 2014) to carry on its commercial dock operations as such operations existed in 2011, as a nonconforming use, as long as the owner/operator (Petitioners) did not seek to construct, alter, pave, improve or rebuild any structure or land on the parcel. As soon as the owner/operator sought to make such an improvement or change, the right to operate as a nonconforming use ceased. That has now occurred.
“As a result, and to continue the use, the operator is required to obtain a conditional use permit for the commercial dock use in its entirety and submit to additional review and conditions imposed by the Planning Board. That is the status of Petitioner’s commercial dock operations now” [Dow, pp. 11, 12; emphasis in original].
“As a non-conforming use—as specifically set out in section 325-17.1—the dock operation is subject [...] to the very direct provision of section 325-17.1 that allows that the commercial dock operation may exist '*as such use existed* [in 2011]' and further, that it may 'continue to operate as a nonconforming use until* such time as one or more of the actions or events specified in Subsection D above is proposed to be undertaken.' We have previously established that an 'action or event specified in Subsection D' has occurred, which terminates Petitioners’ rights as a non-conforming use” [Dow, p. 23; emphasis in original].
“[A] serious question exists as to whether the dock operation has been operating lawfully since 2011 or 2014, in compliance with the limitations of sections 325-29 and 325-17.1 referenced above, and, if it has not conformed to those laws, *whether it has any right at all to continue to operate*” [Dow, p. 24; emphasis added].
2. John Privitera for Colarusso in his 12/6/17 “Petitioner's Reply”:
“Respondent City of Hudson's new administration has staked out illegal ground in which it maintains before this Court that the City has an absolute right to decide if Petitioners have 'any right at all to continue to operate' at its commercial dock” [Privitera, p. 1].
“[T]he City's characterization of Petitioners' dock as a nonconforming use that now needs a conditional use permit to continue operation is simply inaccurate” [Privitera, pp. 2, 3].
3. Supreme Court Justice Michael Melkonian on 1/23/19, in the second lawsuit's “Decision and Order”:
"Indeed, the extensive record herein reflects that the [Hudson] Planning Board made it abundantly clear to petitioners [Colarusso] that inasmuch as petitioners' nonconforming use had ceased, they would be required to obtain a conditional use permit for their continued commercial dock operations" [p. 3].
4. Supreme Court Justice Henry Zwack on 8/9/22, in the follow-up lawsuit's Decision and Order:
“In or around August 2017 the [Hudson] Planning Board determined that Colarusso's non-conforming use as a commercial dock operation had ceased ...” [p. 7].
ReplyDeleteHaul roads are "haulageways" within the NYS Mine Land Reclamation Act.
"Haulageway means all roads utilized for mining purposes, together with that area of land over which material is transported, that are located within the permitted area" - 6 CRR-NY 420.1(e).
Does anyone know the current extent of Colarusso's permitted mining area? The NYSDEC mining permit records "a 1,222-acre Life of Mine limestone and shale mine," an area equal to Colarusso's holdings on Becraft Mountain alone.
By authorizing a "haul road," though, the Planning Board may inadvertently extend the Becraft mine all the way to the Hudson waterfront. The DEC will certainly see it that way the next time it updates the mining permit and nobody in Hudson is paying any attention.
It's concerning that Colarusso was successful in getting Judge Zwack not only to parrot the claim that the causeway road is already a "haul road," but that the entire road exists within "the life of mine." So far, Zwack's seeming corroboration of Colarusso's claim stands unquestioned which, on its own, may have justified the cost of the company's lawsuit. Miners count on achieving their less popular goals slowly and incrementally.
Zwack's repetition of untrue claims:
"The mine and the dock are also connected by a haul road" (Zwack's "Decision and Order," p. 4).
""[T]he involved haul road exists in both City [Hudson] and Town [Greenport]. The haul road is within the 'life of mine' recognized and permitted by the DEC" (Zwack, p. 5).
"Colarusso seeks a declaration that the Planning Board's November 2021 SEQRA determination, and attempts to regulate Colarusso's mining operations, violate the Mined Land Reclamation Law" (Zwack, p. 3).
"Colarusso further argues that the Mined Land Reclamation Law preempts the Planning Board's attempts to regulate Colarusso's operations" (Zwack, pp. 8, 9).
In fact, the Mined Land Reclamation Law states that "local laws or ordinances shall not regulate mining and/or reclamation activities" - 6 CRR-NY 420.2(c). The Planning Board doesn't need a great imagination to know how Colarusso or any future mining interest may repeatedly sue the City over attempted "regulations." The same option secured in the City's 2011 SEQRA Findings Statement to conduct future Supplemental EISs could someday be precluded as an unlawful attempt to "regulate" within the landowner's Life of Mine.
The state's Life of Mine policy was introduced in the early 1980s as guidance to DEC staff on how to handle mining permit renewals under the recently enacted SEQRA. The policy allowed that when a mining application was first submitted to the state, the DEC would henceforth review the environmental impacts of the permit FOR THE ENTIRE LIFE OF THE MINING PROJECT!
By misleading the gullible Judge Zwack into assuming that the mining permit already extends into Hudson, Zwack was under the impression that the single Life of Mine environmental review conducted years ago by NYS DEC applies inside of Hudson. Had that been true, it would preclude the city's right to ever conduct Supplemental Environmental Impact Statements, a right the Common Council believed it had secured with its 2011 zoning amendments.
Is anyone giving any thought to this unnoticed assist to Colarusso's future plans, and the unintended consequences of authorizing a "haul road" which may one day overrule Local Law and the city's waterfront policies within the ever-spreading Life of Mine.
Waterfronts were designed for Industrial use. Check out the history of Hudson's waterfront industrialization dating back to the 1800s. Whaling port, Slaughterhouses etc...
ReplyDeleteAnd for that reason, the Coastal Zone Management Act from which the state's coastal policies derive prioritizes coastal-dependent businesses over those uses which are merely enhanced by a proximity to water. Shipping over restaurants, and so on.
DeleteThis was a central principle all throughout Hudson's waterfront planning. If you'd participated - and perhaps you did - then you couldn't have achieved a more favorable outcome for the city's established water-dependent uses.
But today's mixed-use waterfront wasn't achieved in a straightforward manner. Personally, I'm a bit obsessed with the 19th century robber barons filling in the South Bay, then claiming they owned all new lands beyond the original grant lines. (Today's NYS Office of General Services still covers for the corrupt giveaway of those forever state-owned lands.)
If you rue today's mixed-use waterfront, then you'll have to turn back the clocks and account for Hudson's poor prospects as a whaling port; for the waterfront's serial bankruptcies; it's unsuccessful rail venture; the national downturns which always dry up investment. In the 1980s the fuel tank farm was demolished to make way for the riverfront park. You'll also have to prevent the Hudson Powerboat Association from purchasing property it now owns fair and square. But do you really want that?
Nowadays Hudson's waterfront must accommodate many uses, yet always favoring those that are water-dependent over the merely water-related. In that regard the city's LWRP is a timid document which demonstrably led the way for city government's timidity ever since. Because neither Colarusso nor the once-and-future landowner Holcim will ever go away, today it's the mixed and enhanced uses which need defending against the prospect of runaway industrial growth.
Indeed, it's these mixed uses and public access to the river which are proving the greater source of revenue for the city, creating a local economy our forebears would have envied.
Earth to Lew: It's not the 1800s.
ReplyDelete